Friday, February 29, 2008

Taking sick days.

Both girls have been sick, Hannah with a cold and Ainsley with croup. We've been taking it easy, reading lots of books in the bedroom with the humidifier going.

We broke out yesterday and went into the craft room. I set about completely rearranging everything except for the girls craft area while they did crafts.

Then I lit a candle for Ainsley to blow out over and over and over... which led to candle play. We've done quite a bit of candle play in the past, though I don't think I've blogged about it. It's all been melted wax play, really. This time, however, I put a bucket of water on the desk and Hannah had fun testing out the flammability of different items. Ainsley blew out candles.

Ainsley finally wanted to see what the big deal was...

but she decided that throwing things in the water to see if they would float was much more interesting.

Play, at this age, takes a "stream of conciousness" path. Crafts with popsicle sticks lead to sticking said sticks in fire which leads to throwing the sticks in water which leads to noticing that the colored sticks "bleed" in water which leads to talk about dye. Fascinating.

Ainsley left crafting to help me organize. This box was chock full of yarn when she started. I couldn't believe she stuck with me until it was done.

But to the helper go the spoils - a big box to play in.

And then the helper's big sister sees the fun and takes over.

Ainsley finally left the box since it was only big enough for one and began to play with some animal tri-omino cards. I thought she was just looking at the animal pictures, but a few seconds after I took the following picture, she'd turned the cards so that the sheep and pigs matched. Then she pushed those two cards to the side, got some more and played around like that for almost thirty minutes.

When Ainsley went down for a nap, Hannah and I went back to organizing the craft room. Hannah thought that my old shelf needed some nails in it. To hang necklaces, I think.